House of M
The X-books tour of Battleworld has been largely a parade of misery. And so it’s something of a relief that we get to complete that tour with a relatively pleasant dystopia, at least if you’re a mutant. Sure, House of M is a world where Magneto has installed himself as emperor and is systematically oppressing the humans. But hey, at least the mutants are doing okay. They get to wear cool stormtrooper outfits and everything.
The original House of M miniseries, ten years ago now, was always a better concept than it was a story. It set up a world that looked quite interesting, but what followed was seven issues of gathering the characters and killing the pages until it was time for the deus ex machina to happen. So there’s actually some unused potential that’s worth revisiting here. And that’s pretty much the approach which this book takes; forget the details of the original story, and do something with the general concept, free of any obligation to hit the reset button at the end. (Oh yeah, and pay lip service to Doom. But this is one of those books that might as well not be on Battleworld at all.)
Chikara 15.7 – “Pier Pressure”
Preamble: Yes, I’m still doing these. Yes, we’re falling further and further behind. That was always the plan, since now I know where a lot of this is going. Anyway, this is the third show on the four-date UK tour.
When and where: It’s Sunday 5 April 2015, and we’re in the Masonic Hall in Cardiff, which the Chikara website gamely describes as “intimate and picturesque”. It is indeed a charming little room, presently dominated by a wrestling ring. Looks like a nicely mixed crowd, actually. The stage set up is a bit rudimentary.
1. Elimination Match: Los Ice Creams (El Hijo del Ice Cream & Ice Cream Jr) v. The United Nations (Juan Francisco de Coronado & Prakash Sabar) v. The Wrecking Crew (Jaka & Oleg the Usurper) v. The Gentleman’s Club (Chuck Taylor & Drew Gulak).
The back story: The four-team elimination match is a Chikara staple. The winning team will get a point towards a tag title shot for every team they eliminate. Nobody has any points coming in, but you only need three for a title shot, so a clean sweep could win you a title shot right away. (This handily explains why anyone would bother tagging in for the first fall.) All the teams are technically rudos, but only the UN are unequivocal baddies; Los Ice Creams and the Gentleman’s Club are loveable cheats, while Oleg is teasing a face turn. This is the first time Oleg has wrestled as a member of the Wrecking Crew since being left out of their squad for the season-long Challenge of the Immortals tournament. But it fits with the storyline of the Crew trying to assert their continuing control over him. Los Ice Creams are jobbers, but everyone else has a credible shot. (more…)
Watch With Father #4: Kerwhizz
Since I’ve written about three shows I more or less like, it’s time for some balance. The opening credits of Kerwhizz provoke involuntary flinching and a sense of mild dread. The show is a decent idea on paper. It could have been a great show. But those quiz segments. Oh god, those quiz segments.
Kerwhizz was made in 2008. It was a major commission for CBeebies at the time – it was their first show to be made in HD – and it was hyped accordingly. It was described as the first game show for pre-schoolers, which it really isn’t. The BBC press release is a pile-up of bygone buzzwords – by the end of the first paragraph, the show has already been billed as a “mixed media pre-school quiz show”, and “a brand new breakthrough multi-platform entertainment format aimed at 4 to 6 year olds”. (Quite how it can be both a pre-school quiz show and aimed at 4 to 6 year olds, when most British kids start school at age 4, is not readily apparent.)
Age of Apocalypse
We still have one more Secret Wars X-books to go – House of M – but Age of Apocalypse completes our tour of the X-books’ outright dystopias. As with most of the throwback minis, this isn’t actually the original Age of Apocalypse world, but a new one of the same general ilk. And it pretty much pays lip service to the Battleworld gimmick (in fact, both the prologue and the ending don’t really work in Battleworld terms). What we have here, then, is a nineties nostalgia mini.
This one commits rather more fully to the nostalgia angle, bringing back Fabian Nicieza, one of the writers of the original crossover. Nicieza hasn’t done any work for Marvel in a while, but is obviously well placed to echo the tone of his own original story.
Secret Convergence on Infinite Podcasts
As you may have seen on Twitter, House to Astonish is going to be taking part in a huge, complex crossover with eight other excellent comics and pop culture podcasts, under the banner of Secret Convergence on Infinite Podcasts.
The crews of the Fan Bros Show, Into It with Elle Collins, SILENCE!, Less Than Live with Kate or Die, Journey Into Misery, Wait, What?, us, War Rocket Ajax and Rachel & Miles X-Plain the X-Men are set to be swept away to Battlepod by the Beyonder, to help him understand comics and comic culture in a series of round-table discussions.
House to Astonish’s episode is part 7 of the crossover, and I’m joined on that episode by Wait, What?’s Jeff Lester, Into It’s Elle Collins, and Journey Into Misery’s Helena Hart to discuss our comic book guilty pleasures. You can also find me on part 3 (SILENCE!) and part 4 (Less Than Live), and Paul on part 6 (Wait, What?) and part 9 (Rachel & Miles X-Plain the X-Men).
It all kicks off on 29 October on the Fan Bros Show, where hosts DJ BenHaMeen and Chico Leo will be discussing the question of “Who would win in a fight?”, alongside Wait, What?’s Graeme McMillan, War Rocket Ajax’s Chris Sims and X-Plain the X-Men’s Rachel Edidin, and runs through until 29 November.
It’s been in the works since April (and has been something of a logistical nightmare), but it’s going to be really enjoyable if the episodes I’ve been privy to so far are anything to go by, and we’ve got some brilliant announcements to come, like the identity of our special guest Beyonder voice (though it’s not hard to find out now, if you pay close attention), and the specially commissioned art which James Stokoe has done for us – and hey, check out our launch image above, produced just for the occasion by Brandon Graham. Mega, eh?
You can find more details on the podcast’s Tumblr over here, or follow along on Twitter. We’ll keep you updated here too as the various episodes go live. We’re all incredibly proud of this, and we hope you enjoy it.
House to Astonish Episode 138
Plenty of juicy comics chat for you this time round, with discussion of Fox’s two new X-Men TV shows, the upcoming Power Man & Iron Fist series, AfterShock Comics’ announcement of American Monster, DC’s new Wonder Woman digital series, and all the recent comings and goings on Marvel’s movies and TV shows. We’ve also got reviews of I Hate Fairyland and Uncanny Avengers, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe hasn’t worked out all the bugs. All this plus Marc Alessi’s crossword solving service, the canon of the Gruffalo extended universe and the weird soapy taste of the Inhumans.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, via email, on Twitter or on our Facebook fan page. There’s also top-flight tops available at our fabulous Redbubble store.
We’ve got a few other bits of promotion to do, but I think I’ll split those out into another post. No point burying the lede.
What If? Infinity: X-Men #1
Some questions can only really be answered with another question. Take, for example, the X-books’ contribution to a load of What If? one-shots based on 2013’s Infinity crossover.
The book asks the question: “What if the X-Men were the sole survivors of Infinity?” To which the obvious response is, “Why would anyone want to know that?”
Old Man Logan
It is the nature of big crossovers – even of the type Marvel do nowadays – that sometimes a tie-in book pops up, whose remit is to move a character from A to B. This isn’t always a bad thing; often, a remit like that is so minimal that it makes it perfectly possible to wrap a decent story around it. A plot point for the big story can double as a macguffin for the small one.
Old Man Logan is a series that exists to get a character from A to B. But when you get down to it, that’s pretty much the sum total of what happens in the book.
Watch With Father #3: Bing
“Round the corner, not far away / Bing is [Insert Subject Here] today.” So begins – give or take a subject – every episode of Bing, in which an animated three-year-old bunny encounters and learns to overcome the challenges of toddler life.
Bing‘s five-minute episodes have a pretty standard formula. Bing is doing something that makes him happy; something goes wrong; Bing is upset, or scared, or angry, or some such thing; but the gentle guidance of Flop helps Bing come to with things, and all is well again. Then Bing recaps the story to end the show. (Who’s Flop? We’ll come back to Flop.) All scenarios are completely realistic – Bing is scared of fireworks, Bing accidentally breaks Flop’s phone, Bing isn’t patient enough to be quiet so that he can feed the ducks properly. That sort of thing.
E is for Extinction
While much of Secret Wars may be taken up with callbacks to the great crossovers of yesterday, but E is for Extinction turns its attention to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run from 2001-2004. (Strictly speaking, “E is for Extinction” was just the first arc of his run, but you can’t really call a book Grant Morrison’s X-Men when Grant Morrison isn’t doing it.)
In its way, of course, Morrison’s run was far more significant to the X-Men than any “event” book. For the first time since the 1975 relaunch, it broke with the idea that the X-Men was a single, ever-growing saga. Not everything in the preceding decade had been a straight emulation of Chris Claremont – the Seagle/Bachalo run was in that period, for example – but it was all positioned as a continuation. Morrison’s run, both at beginning and end, is a break point.
